


Stay With Me

by CatWingsAthena



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: "don't move", "stay with me", Big Brother Derek Morgan, Burns, Concussions, Episode: s02e01 The Fisher King Part 2, Explosion, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, No. 12, No. 17 - Freeform, No. 2 - Freeform, Scene Rewrite, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 19:51:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20841083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatWingsAthena/pseuds/CatWingsAthena
Summary: That scene at the end of “The Fisher King: Part 2” where Reid tries to talk down Randall Garner, who has a bomb strapped to his chest, and fails, only Reid was a little closer to the bomb, so he got a little more burned and hit the ground a little more headfirst (don’t ask me how that works).Or, Reid gets hurt and Morgan takes care of him. Y’know, the good stuff.Written for Whumptober 2019, prompts #2 Explosion, #12 “Don’t move”, and #17 “Stay with me”.





	Stay With Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vita_sine_fantasy_mors_est](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vita_sine_fantasy_mors_est/gifts).

> Hello! It's officially October, so I'm finally posting this! This fic contains references to someone getting physically sick, a bomb, burns (discussed in some detail), and psychosis. Also, I used the title twice, in two different contexts--see if you can spot both uses. Vita, I hope you like this! (People who are not Vita, I hope you like this as well!)

When Reid saw the shadow cross the wall upstairs, he immediately crept up towards it.

This was their chance to save Rebecca. Randall Garner was keeping her prisoner, and if Reid—or anyone else in the BAU—could get him to understand that, maybe they could end this without any need for further violence.

Reid knew that wandering off was a bad idea. So he whispered “there’s someone upstairs” into his radio and let Morgan and the other agents they were working with go first. But when they were in position, and Morgan tried to go in, Reid stopped him.

He had years of experience talking to people in psychotic episodes—well,  _ one _ person in psychotic episodes, but it would have to be enough.

“Mr. Garner?” he called through the door. “My name’s Spencer Reid. You were in the hospital with my mother. I—I think—I think she might have confused you.”

Reid cursed the stammer in his voice. It still came out when he was nervous. He took a breath and continued in a smooth tone. “All we want to do is help Rebecca. That’s exactly what you want, right? That’s why you sent us the puzzles? That’s why you said you hoped you’d be seeing us soon?”

A soft, raspy voice from the other side of the door. “Ask the question.” The voice sounded tired, scripted, like the man speaking was finally voicing a conversation he’d had in his head a million times, like the words were so old they’d lost their meaning.

Reid knew where this was going. In the stories, the knight Sir Percival failed to ask the right question. The one that would’ve healed the injured Fisher King. Reid could only hope he’d have better luck.

“There is no magical question, Mr. Garner,” Reid replied. He knew it probably wouldn’t be so easy to snap the man out of such a deeply entrenched delusion. He also knew that if he tried to play along and got it wrong, things could go south very quickly.

Reid then turned to address his team. “He believes that if I ask him the right question, it’ll heal all of his wounds,” he explained in a whisper.

“Do you know the question?” Hotch asked.

No, Reid didn’t. The stories didn’t specify what the right question would have been, only that Sir Percival had gotten it wrong. But Hotch and Morgan didn’t know that, and Reid was the most qualified to handle someone in a psychotic episode. The best chance of a positive outcome was for Reid to go in alone, and his teammates would only let him do that if he stretched the truth a little. “I know what he wants,” Reid said. (Which was technically true—Mr. Garner wanted him to ask the question that, to his mind, would heal him. The fact that Reid didn’t know the question? Well, that was beside the point.) “I’m gonna move to where he can see me.” He handed his gun to an agent, ignoring Hotch and Morgan’s shouts of protest, and slowly made his way into the passageway.

“Stay calm, Mr. Garner,” he said as he made his way forward.

“Ask the question, Sir Percival,” said Mr. Garner. There was an air of great ceremony to his words.

“I told you, I’m not Percival,” said Reid. “My name is Dr. Spencer Reid from the FBI. You were in the hospital with my mother, Diana?”

“If you want the grail, you must ask the question!” Mr. Garner’s words were angry. He was getting upset that Reid wasn’t following his script. Reid knew he was taking a risk, and hoped it would pay off.

“She’s not a grail!” he said. “She’s your daughter, her name’s Rebecca.” He hoped the use of Rebecca’s name would reach Mr. Garner, somehow.

“My daughters died in a fire,” said Mr. Garner, voice heavy with grief. “And my son, and my wife.”

“Rebecca lived.”

“No,” Mr. Garner insisted. “Your mother. She explained it all to me.”

Time for another gamble. “My mother is a paranoid schizophrenic who’d forget to eat if she wasn’t properly medicated and supervised.”  _ Sorry, Mom _ . He put a driving edge into his voice, trying to get the point across—this source is not to be trusted.

“She made me realize none of it was real,” Mr. Garner said. “I didn’t lose Rebecca. She never existed in the first place.”

Reid was almost to the door. Just a few more steps...

“She does exist, Mr. Garner,” he said, “and we’re here to help her.” 

Slowly, he pushed the door open.

And saw Mr. Garner, sitting in a chair with a bomb strapped to his chest and his thumb on the trigger.

Immediately, Reid’s brain went into action mode. He looked at the size of the explosives, took a guess from the appearance of the bomb as to their content, made an estimate of the air temperature, and calculated the likely blast radius.

Conclusion: this was bad.

Running, he knew, would only make Mr. Garner more likely to detonate the bomb. And he couldn’t outrun it. His best option was probably a slow, measured retreat.

But that wasn’t Rebecca’s best option.

“Hotch, Morgan?” he said softly. “I think maybe... it’d be better if you guys waited downstairs.”

“What?” Hotch whispered.

“Mr. Garner and I are just gonna... talk alone up here,” he said.

“Go ahead and talk, Reid,” said Morgan, “but we’re not going anywhere.”

No. This wasn’t right, they were supposed to be leaving, no one else was supposed to get hurt... They were far enough away that they’d probably be clear of the worst of the blast zone, if Reid’s estimates were correct, but there had been far too much guessing involved in those estimates for Reid’s comfort.

He had to get this right. Not just for Rebecca. For Hotch and Morgan.

Reid slowly stepped forward. Maybe, if he could get to Mr. Garner and take the detonator...

“Ask the question, I’ll be healed,” said Mr. Garner, “and you may take the grail.”

Reid was silent for a second, weighing his options. He continued to move forward.

“Just ask the question, Sir Knight.”

Finally, Reid spoke. “I can’t.”

“Heal me!”

“Mr. Garner, a fisher king wound cannot be healed by somebody else.” Reid had done this sometimes with his mother—enter the delusion, try to change the direction by saying something close enough to true, just couched in language the deluded person would listen to. “It’s not a wound to the body. It’s a wound to the memory, a wound to the mind. It’s—it’s a wound that only you can find, and a wound that only you can heal.”

“Just ask the question.”

_ Damn. _ One more thing to try.

“There’s only one question that matters, Mr. Garner,” Reid said, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. He was almost across the room now. “There’s only one really important question.” He let that sit for a moment, then spoke again. “Can you forgive yourself?”

Mr. Garner looked at him with impossibly sad eyes, and Reid knew he’d either made breakthrough progress or a huge mistake.

“I couldn’t get to them,” Mr. Garner said.

“If you tell me where she is, you can save Rebecca now,” said Reid, daring to hope. “Tell me where Rebecca is.”

“You already know,” said Mr. Garner. “I sent your mother the map.”

“What map?” asked Reid, even as he saw something shift in Mr. Garner’s eyes.  _ No, no, no. _ He’d done it wrong, he’d done it wrong and...

“Can I forgive myself?” Mr. Garner asked as Reid slowly backed away, trying not to make any sudden movements. “No, I can’t.”

Reid turned. “RUN!” he shouted, and started to do just that.

The next second, the world went white.

There was a tremendous noise, a flash of brightness, and a wave of overwhelming heat. Reid felt himself being lifted up, then slammed into something hard. His head collided with the surface on which he’d landed, and everything flickered.

Then, it hit.

A wave of fierce, bright  _ fire _ on the backs of his legs.

Reid tried to open his eyes, tried to raise his head, but doing so made him aware of a fierce, pounding ache in his head as the world spun so intensely that he collapsed back down again.

He needed to move, needed to clear the blast zone, he could feel the burning pushing past tolerable, that meant something, he needed to do something, what did he need to do...

Morgan’s voice cut through the haze.

“Don’t move!” Morgan shouted. “Don’t move!”

Reid felt something soft and heavy on his legs. The pain didn’t abate, but it stopped getting worse.

Reid felt himself being picked up. He couldn’t quite stop a whimper as the motion made his head throb intensely and jostled the burns on his legs. “Sorry,” he heard Morgan’s voice say, “but we gotta get you out of here.”

“Wait...” said Reid. There was something important, he  _ knew _ there was something important... Everything was rushing past at a dizzying pace, swaying and making him feel sick. He hoped he didn’t throw up on Morgan. But wait, he had to say this... “Rebecca... map...” 

“What map, Reid?” Hotch was there. Huh.

“Mom... photo...”  _ C'mon, put it together. _ Reid knew he had all the information he needed. Mr. Garner’s sense of fair play would’ve made sure of that. If Morgan would just put him down... down... OH!

“Basement...” Reid said. “She’s in the basement.”

“All right,” said Hotch. “Morgan, get Reid outside. I’ll get Rebecca.”

“Wait,” said Reid. “Won’t be that easy.”

“What do you mean?” asked Morgan. “We’re running out of time.”

Reid wiggled around to retrieve the key he’d been given and handed it to Hotch. “In the videos... she was chained. Youngest holds the key.”

“All right,” said Hotch. “Now go!”

Morgan was once again moving at a dizzying clip, and Reid felt nausea building in his abdomen. He pressed his mouth shut, but the smoke in the air made it hard to breath, and a coughing fit aggravated the nausea further. “Morgan?” Reid said softly, in between coughs.

“Tell me when we’re outside,” Morgan replied.

“Sorry,” said Reid, just before losing his battle not to be sick.

He tried not to get it on Morgan. He mostly failed.

“Oh, kid,” said Morgan. “Almost out.”

The air was hot and thick, smoke irritating Reid’s nose and eyes. The burns on Reid’s legs were screaming, made worse by the ambient heat and Morgan’s grip as he hurried through the burning house. Reid clung to Morgan, closed his eyes, and prayed it would end soon. One way or another.

Soon, he got his wish.

They passed through a doorway, and the air cooled. Breathing became easier. Several more bumpy meters, then Reid was carefully set down and rolled onto his side. Morgan placed one of his arms under his head.  _ Recovery position, _ some part of Reid’s brain supplied distantly.

Everything hurt, but the cool air and ground were nice. Reid really just wanted to drift off for a bit...

“Hey, Reid, stay with me!” Morgan’s voice cut through the cloudy haze that was Reid’s brain. “Don’t go checking out on me just yet. I need to check your neurological status. How many fingers am I holding up?”

Reid dragged his eyes open and looked at Morgan’s fingers. “Three,” he mumbled.

“Good. Now, I’m gonna check your pupils, which means I’m gonna shine a light in your eyes, okay?”

“‘Kay.” The next moment, a stabbing pain assailed Reid’s eyes as Morgan’s flashlight swept across them. 

Morgan sighed slightly. “What’s your name?”

“Dr. Spencer Reid.”

“Where are you?”

“Randall Garner’s house... Rebecca! Is—is she okay?”

“Yeah, she is. We got her out, thanks to you. She’s over there with Hotch and the others, waiting for an ambulance just like you.”

Reid relaxed slightly. “Thanks.”

Morgan smiled a little. “You’re welcome. Now, what day is it?”

“Wednesday, September 20th, 2006, um...” Reid trailed off. “I don’t know... don’t know what time it is.”

“If you were anyone else I’d call that A&Ox4, but, since you’re you, I’m a little worried that you don’t know what time it is down to the minute. And, based on the fact that you hurled on me earlier, I’m pretty sure you have a concussion. So when the ambulance gets here, we’re gonna go to the hospital and get your head and those burns looked at, okay?”

Anything that might make the burns hurt less sounded  _ very _ nice.

“Okay.”

...

When the nurse came into the waiting room at the hospital, Morgan was out of his chair before she could get the words out.

She led him to Reid’s room, and he walked in.

Reid was lying on his stomach, head turned to the side, covered by a sheet. When he heard Morgan come in, he tried to raise himself up, only to wince and lie back down.

Morgan came around into his field of view and sat down in the chair which had been helpfully placed directly within Reid’s line of sight.

“Hey pretty boy,” he said. “How you doin’?”

“My legs hurt—”

“Yeah, I bet—”

“But other than that, I feel fine. How’s Rebecca?”

Morgan gave him a dubious look. “Reid, you just got blown up. No one expects you to be fine.”

“But—”

“No buts. You need to get some rest. And Rebecca’s all right. I talked to her, she’s an amazingly resilient woman. She’ll recover. How’s your head?”

“The doctor says I have a grade 2 concussion,” said Reid.

“Got your bell rung, huh?” Morgan replied, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Yeah. The doctor says I have to be on cognitive rest. Which means no work, no music, no  _ reading... _ ” Reid trailed off. “No  _ reading? _ Really?”

“Your brain needs to not be doing anything for a while, so it can heal,” said Morgan patiently. “When I played football, I got a few concussions, and they put me on cognitive rest once or twice. Believe me, I know how annoying it is, but it’s good for you in the long run.” Morgan knew Reid knew all that. He also knew that Reid was in a lot of pain, and using most of his self-control not to show it. It was no wonder he was sounding a bit whiny.

“Yeah, I know,” Reid said. “It’s just...”

“Yeah,” said Morgan. “And the burns?”

“I’ll live. They’re only second degree.”

“Are the blisters open or closed?”

“Is that any of your business?”

“Yes,” Morgan replied. “It’s my business because I care about you and want to know if you’re okay.”

“Open,” Reid said after a moment, “but they gave me dressings and antibiotic ointment, so I shouldn’t have to worry about infection.”

“Can you handle those on your own, or... you know what, I shouldn’t even ask, should I? You’re staying with me until you’re better, and I’m going to give you whatever help you need.”

Reid gave Morgan a deeply unamused look. “I don’t need—”

“Sure, you don’t need help,” said Morgan. “Because you  _ never _ need help. Because, just ‘cause you’ve been going it alone your whole life means you can’t ever let anyone help you when you’re down. You’re used to doing everything by yourself, I get it. But maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to let someone take care of you every now and then.” Morgan looked at Reid, who looked away. “C’mon. I get that this is embarrassing. And if you really don’t want me to help with the burns, I won’t. But at least stay with me until you’re better. Just for my peace of mind, if nothing else.”

Slowly, Reid nodded. “Okay.”

Morgan was mildly surprised. He hadn’t expected it to be that easy to get Reid to agree. But then, he knew Reid was exhausted—maybe too exhausted to argue.

Damn. When  _ Reid _ was too exhausted to argue, you knew it was bad.

Just then, the nurse came in.

She looked at Reid. “Is all right if I discuss your health in front of...”

“Agent Morgan,” Morgan supplied.

“Yes,” Reid said. “I’m going to be staying with him.”

“I think that’s a very good idea,” the nurse said. “You’re free to leave whenever you’re ready. Here’s some extra-strength acetaminophen, and we gave you antibiotic cream and bandages. You’ll want to change the dressing twice a day, and wash the burns once a day. Make sure you keep using your legs, otherwise the skin might heal too tightly. As for your concussion, the burns should naturally limit your ability to work until your brain heals, so I’m not too worried, but remember that all sorts of little things count as work—no TV, no video games, no texting—”

“—I don’t think you have to worry much there,” Morgan observed.

“—No reading, no music, and definitely no paperwork.”

Reid sighed. “Yes, I remember.”

“Just making sure,” the nurse said.

...

Reid was not looking forward to the car ride back to Morgan’s place.

The burns were worst on the backs of his thighs—exactly where sitting in a car put pressure.

And Morgan would be sitting right next to him the whole time, alert for any signs of distress.

_ Wonderful. _

Reid made his way out to the waiting room, admittedly leaning on Morgan quite a bit. When he got there, he was swarmed by his team, who were starting to make him feel claustrophobic when Gideon’s voice instructed them to “Let him breath, people.”

“JJ?” asked Reid. “Garcia? When did you two get here?” 

“When we heard you got blown up!” Garcia declared. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” said Reid, whose legs were beginning to loudly protest having to keep him upright for so long and whose head was quite steadily pounding.

JJ gave him a dubious look. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”

“We all are,” said Hotch. “Speaking of which, you didn’t think the fact that Randall Garner had a  _ bomb _ was something we needed to know?”

“I told you guys to wait downstairs,” Reid mumbled.

Morgan apparently took pity on Reid, because his next words were “we gotta go. Pretty boy needs his rest.”

“Bye,” said Garcia, blowing him a kiss.

Reid smiled as his team’s goodbyes blended into a tapestry of camaraderie.

Now for the hard part.

When they got to the car, Morgan opened Reid’s door and stood by as Reid got situated. Reid managed not to make any noise, but it was a near thing. He  _ did _ wind up holding onto Morgan’s proffered arm quite a bit, and squeezing rather harder than he’d intended to. Morgan didn’t say anything.

Every time they hit a bump in the road, Reid flinched. He noticed, however, that they weren’t hitting many—Morgan was taking great care to drive as smoothly as he could.

Still, by the time they got to Morgan’s house, Reid really just wanted this day to be  _ over _ already.

When they arrived, Morgan got Reid settled on the couch.

“C’mon,” Morgan said after disappearing for a minute. “I made up the spare bedroom for you.”

Reid looked down. “Thanks.” Then, he slowly pushed himself up and off the couch.

Morgan stood by and watched, following closely and providing directions, as Reid made his way through the house, fists clenched.

When they got to the bedroom, Reid made his way to the bed, then paused.

He could do this. He  _ knew _ he could do this.

After a moment of struggle, Reid was up and on the bed. He blinked away the tears in his eyes, wriggled under the covers, and raised himself up enough to look back at Morgan. “Thank you.”

Morgan paused in the doorway, then turned out the light.

“Anytime.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! I make no claims to actual medical accuracy, but I did do some research for this, so hopefully it’s not too far off. Speaking of which, for those who care, “A&Ox4” means “alert and oriented to person (who they are), place (where they are), time, and event (what’s going on).” 
> 
> I hope you liked this! If you did, please let me know below!


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